Question: We have pledged to take care of one another in order to uphold the standard we achieved in the Arava and to keep moving further. But what should a person do if he suddenly discovers that he has “fallen out of the loop”? Should he feel that he is drilling a hole in the common boat?

Answer: Of course. And this should be a source of great distress for him. First of all, it’s not simple to reach the sensation of unity, but he should at least regret the fact that he is separated from it. Secondly, let him feel bad from knowing that all the friends are already there. Thirdly, his absence harms others, and this entire harm is recorded in his account.

This way, he misses out on much more than his personal concern because his part is idle in every one of the friends and does not complete each one of them. It turns out that his harm is multiplied by the number of members in the group.

Until now we talked about the egoistic calculation, but now let’s look at the problem from the other side. A person does not support his friends with mutual guarantee, does not become similar to the Creator, and does not attain bestowal to Him by working in the group. This spiritual damage is not as obvious, but we have to remember about it as well.

Question: Can we say that by doing so a person shifts not only the whole group, but also the whole world to evil?

Answer: If you have received the opportunity to enter mutual guarantee with your friends, then by participating in the common work, obviously you shift the world to goodness. After all, every person is part of the common network and we are its central part. Therefore, by strengthening the group, I strengthen the whole world in its spiritual ascent. And the opposite is also true.[61337]From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/21/11, “Mutual Guarantee”

Baal HaSulam, Letter No. 13: You should believe that there are plenty of sparks of bestowal in each friend, and if we gather them all in one place, in brotherly unity, love, and friendship, of course, it would be enough to reach a significant spiritual level now and for life.

Nothing was created in the world but one soul. The parts, sparks, of that one soul wake up from generation to generation and achieve correction. All the generations, which have completed their correction, unite in the last generation, which begins with us.

Our generation is special. It should connect within itself all the previous generations: from Adam HaRishon, through Abraham and Rabbi Shimon, the Ari, and Baal HaSulam who have performed big corrections in one soul and have prepared its significant, special, and lightest part for us. But besides that, we must connect to ourselves all the future vessels or desires (Kelim) that complete correction.

We connect within ourselves those who are behind us, our forefathers, and those who are ahead of us, our sons, all of them together. We have reached the condition when the world begins to demand correction; souls begin to awaken. And although people do not understand this, it is not necessary because they belong to the part of the collective soul that reaches correction unconsciously, thanks to the connection with us.

Our duty is to unite, to connect within ourselves all the holy sparks of bestowal, which corrected this system before us—and to complete correction.

This is an extraordinary time; we feel that this is a special state. And we see how the Creator helps us, that is, makes it possible for us to unite and purify ourselves so that what we desire so much becomes realized.[61183]From Lesson 1, Arvut Convention at the Arava Desert 11/18/2011

A group of Bnei Baruch students in Montreal are seriously preparing for the forthcoming World Arvut Convention. Presently, there are about twenty people studying at the group’s learning center located in the city center, across from the Jewish General Hospital.

Question: Very often on the lectures you mention that Bnei Baruch is the most powerful group in the world now. My question is: What does this mean, “the most powerful group”? Can a student choose a group? And if one can, then how to do that?

Answer:In their impact on the world, the world Bnei Baruch group is a powerful educational organization, both in terms of the amount of its members and its affect on human development.

Question: I have done some research, so would you be so kind as to answer the following: The main authors of Kabbalah books in English are: 1. Eliphas Levi, 2. MacGregor Mathers, 3. H.P. Blavatsky, and 4. A.E. Waite. These are inherently men of questionable backgrounds. How can I trust this material?

Second, I see there has never been any copy of The Zohar found earlier than the Middle Ages. Why is this?

Answer:These authors are not Kabbalists, that is, they have not reached the revelation of the Creator, and they describe their own visions. The Zohar was discovered by the masses in the Middle Ages because previously it was handed down only from Kabbalist to Kabbalist. The Zohar was revealed because the widow of the Kabbalist Moshe de Leon, due to lack of means, began to sell his books, including The Zohar. Baal HaSulam writes about this in “Introduction to The Book of Zohar.”[61256]

The soul is the connection between all of the parts, which we can only imagine. The soul is everything that was created, all of creation together, the whole of reality, including our world. Even though our world is “imaginary,” it is also part of the same unified soul.

There is nothing except this one soul, which is the vessel that the Creator, the Light, created. But we can imagine this soul and discover its inner power only by connecting all of the parts and turning it into a living organism.

The Light is the life animating force. To feel life, we must connect all the internal parts into one body, putting each part in its place: the brain, the heart, the liver, the kidneys, the legs, the arms, and so on. If a person is able to perceive all of them as one body, even in the simplest form where most of the organs still do not function, but all of it connects properly, then the spiritual picture on the first degree is revealed to him.

We cannot discover half or a quarter of the soul. In the spiritual world this does not exist. There is no “partial” in spirituality, but only a whole structure of ten complete Sefirot, not nine and not eleven. So I must reveal the full picture.

In this complete picture I reveal every part of reality that I see before me. I see the place of all nations and the entire universe, all the first ten Sefirot, what belongs where, and what force operates everything. I see all this within myself. I discover myself and nothing besides that.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is the study, the discovery of oneself. In this way, I reveal reality. All of creation is me.

Through the study, we need to accept this picture and imagine it correctly. Then it will become clear to us that Kabbalists write about what’s going on inside them. After all, a person is the whole world. Everything you see now is portrayed from within, and it is only an optical illusion that it exists outside.[60923]From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/16/2011, TES

Question: How can we explain to the friends that it is impossible to attain correction by oneself and that we need a group?

Answer: This is what our sources say. I only have a shattered vessel, so what should I do with it? I have to absorb my friends’ desires in order to draw the Light that Reforms.

Together with the friends we raise a common prayer, and as a result we receive the force of correction. I will not be able to receive this force if I am alone. At least ten people are required in order to attain it. Only then will we begin to connect to each other and to build the common vessel between us.

It seems that we are together now, but actually it isn’t so. So how can we unite? We activate the force of the mutual prayer for that. No one operates on his own. The common desire to correct ourselves connects us, and in it we want to reveal the special force that will dwell between us, to reveal the Light, the Creator. When He is revealed, we each will disappear as an isolated entity, and one desire filled with one Light will arise.

Can I reveal the force of bestowal by myself? What or to whom will I be able to bestow? I must simply have someone else there too. My point in the heart (•) is my first urge for correction, in other words, for connecting with someone. This means that I have to absorb his desire. Then I have two desires: a desire to draw away from egoism and a desire to draw closer to bestowal.

So I have to receive my friend’s spiritual desire and to attach it to mine. Without this I will not really want to bestow. This is the only way I can raise MAN, a request for correction.

“The minimal multitude is two,” but actually, two is not enough. The more friends there are around me, the more chances I will have to be impressed, to attach their powers to me, and to demand correction. By that, I demand namely the connection with them. I supply the “territory” in which the connection will be realized, my wishes about what needs to take place here, and our common force. In short, I have to prepare the most possibly correct “mold.” It can be done only together. All our work takes place in the group.

Besides, women also support this group, and human society surrounds it on the outside. These factors also have either a positive or negative effect in pushing us towards connection.

Question: What does one feel when the Light fills our desire?

Answer: One of the points is me. All of us together is we. The yellow part in the drawing symbolizes our connection, and the red color symbolizes the upper force, the Creator. We have to unite Israel, the Torah, and the Creator into one, and this has to be revealed in our feeling. The Creator is the upper force, the source. The Torah is unity, the vessel. And we are the parts moving toward unity.

It is known from the wisdom of Kabbalah that the only means that can change anything is the Light that Reforms. It sustains our lives, it gives livelihood to everything, and it executes all the changes. In accordance with the qualities of the Light, desire and the entire path of creation from the beginning to the end is instilled in the nature of the Light—how to change the matter, the desire to receive, in order to bring it to equivalence of form with the Light itself.

We constitute this matter in the hands of the Creator, the Light, and we can awaken and intensify its influence on ourselves and in doing so, accelerate our development. Since we accelerate our development ourselves, by wanting it and revealing our desire more, the Light influences our evolution more and executes a more meaningful act on it. Thus we feel our advancement as something good and desirable. Indeed, we add to the process of evolution that flows “in its time” (Beito) our own part, the addition called “hastening time” (Achishena) since we yearn for that same place and form that the Light wants to bring us to.

From where do we know this? It is thanks to the efforts we make in trying to see ourselves as connected together, as one man with one heart, so that our desires merge into one. And then, to the extent that we try to awaken our hearts to connect, to perform various actions so that they connect into one heart, with no differences between them, to that extent we awaken the Light that will bestow on this connection, on our efforts to connect with an even greater intensity than when it works according to its usual evolutionary plan called “in its time.” In this way we accelerate time.

In order to awaken the influence of the Light on the desire, we ourselves need to imagine that we are trying to connect the hearts and adopt the form of the Light, the attribute of mutual bestowal. We have to envision this to the extent that each one of us loses his own feeling of existence, and all of us together acquire oneness that includes everyone within it: the group, the soul, composed of the individual hearts. And then the Light bestows on us and completes the act.[60664]From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/14/2011, The Zohar